---
display_title: "Why We Burned It Down - John's POV (the chaos)"
meta_title: "Why We Burned It Down and Rebuilt Hyprnote From Scratch"
meta_description: "The messy truth about why we rewrote Hyprnote. No product philosophy, too many pivots, motion without progress—and how we finally got focused."
author: "John Jeong"
created: "2025-11-10"
published: true
coverImage: "/api/images/blog/why-we-burned-it-down/cover.png"
featured: true
---

### tl;dr
We didn't rewrite Hyprnote because it was smart strategy.
We rewrote it because what we built before was confused.
And the only way to fix it was to burn it down.

### The Early Mess

When Yujong and I started, we weren't working on Hyprnote.
We were trying to build an AI hardware toy that talks to kids.
But hardware was slow. Brutal. Not something two people could actually ship fast..

So we pivoted to software.

I'd spent a lot of time in meetings, trying AI notetakers like Clovanote.
None of them captured nuance — the difference between "ok" and "OK!" matters when you're selling.
I wanted something stupidly simple, clean, fast. Something I'd actually use.
That was the spark for Hyprnote.

### Shiny Tech. No Philosophy.

Early on, we got distracted.
We picked Tauri because it felt cool.
We said "let's do local-first everything" because it sounded clever.
Transcription, LLM, cloud, BYOK, lifetime license… everything.

We had no product philosophy.
No sharp segment.
Just vibes.

People liked it at first. Open source folks said they'd use it over Granola just because it was open source. That gave us confidence… but also made us more confused.

Local-first ≠ open source.
They're adjacent. Not the same.
And we never picked a lane.

### YC Made It Worse

Then Y Combinator happened.
And this is where we stopped thinking straight.

Our group partners kept asking the right questions. Every single time.

The question that we struggled the most was:

> Who are your users?

We said that we were focusing on enterprise — but we weren't sure.
We were still trying to figure out who we should be selling to: banks, defense, military, or whatever.

They weren't the problem. We were.
Instead of slowing down to reflect, we tried to answer immediately.
We mistook speed for clarity.

As James from Pioneer Fund told me:

> Don't mistake motion for progress.

He said it's written on his son's door.
We fell into that trap hard.

We were moving fast.
Just in 12 different directions at once.
Vectors everywhere.

### Too Much Logic. Too Much Talking. Too Little Clarity.

We debated everything. Local vs cloud. Enterprise vs prosumer. Bottom-up vs top-down.
We tried to _logic_ our way into clarity.
You can't.

Add hiring on top of that and it got worse.
Too many opinions. Too much communication overhead.
Alignment took forever. We moved slower, not faster.

Honestly, YC was a wake-up call for me on hiring.
I'm not hiring again for a while. Just me and Yujong now — and we're moving faster than ever.

### Investors Pushed One Way. My Gut Said Another.

Early angels pushed the "local-first enterprise" angle.
"Regulated industries love data sovereignty."
And yeah, they do. But enterprise ≠ local-first.
They care about compliance, SOC2, consent, legal — we weren't ready for any of that.

And the whole time, my gut said:
Build for people like you.
Busy individuals who live in meetings and want a tool that just _works_.

I ignored my gut for months. That was on me.

### The Product Rotted

Because we never picked a path, we tried to build everything:

- Local speech-to-text
- Local LLM
- Bring-your-own-endpoints
- owhisper
- Admin server
- Hybrid setups no one fully understood

It became this big, over-engineered pile of "potential" that felt bad to use.
The codebase was tangled. The design was directionless.
I didn't even like opening our own app anymore.

### Motion Isn't Progress

For months, I was obsessed with motion.
Metrics. Launches. Growth hacks.
But everything starts and ends with product.

I've seen the hype cycles in the valley. They all crash.
What's left after the hype is gone is the product. Nothing else.

### The MVP Isn't What It Used to Be

Around this time, I read something from the Linear blog that really clicked.

The definition of "MVP" is different now.
Back in the lean startup era, an MVP could be a scrappy little wedge — barely working.
Not anymore.

Users expect more.
Products have matured.
An MVP today still has to _feel complete_.
It can be scrappy under the hood, but it can't be crappy in the hands.

And if your wedge is _design_, like us, you don't even get that scrappy margin.
You have to nail it.

So we stopped trying to play the "ship crap fast" game.
We're going to build something tight, sharp, and clean — and ship it with confidence.

### Ferrari vs Porsche

I've been thinking a lot about differentiators. Honestly? I don't have a perfect answer.
Granola exists. They're great. They're Porsche.

We want to be Ferrari.

Both are sports cars. Both fast. Both in the same league.
But Ferrari is hand-crafted, opinionated, focused on a specific segment.
Porsche is more accessible, more mass.

We're not trying to win everyone.
We're trying to dominate a niche that _really cares_.

We'll filter people through a waitlist. We'll charge from the start.
And if people don't like that, that's fine. We're not for everyone.

### Just Focus

I've stopped caring about what others are building.
Competitors matter long term, sure.
But right now, it's us, our users, and the product.

### Burn It Down. Build It Better.

Fixing the old app would've taken longer than rewriting it.
And honestly — it didn't deserve to be fixed.

So we burned it down.
We rebuilt everything from scratch.
New app. Clean architecture. Sharper focus.

This time:

- We're building for people like us.
- We're opinionated.
- We're not mistaking speed for progress.
- We're not shipping crap just to "look busy."
- We're going Ferrari mode.

This isn't a polished comeback story.
It's just us finally admitting what we messed up.
And getting back to building a product we actually believe in.



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